1. Technical Field
The invention relates to view management. More particularly, the invention relates to graphical user interfaces that provide multiple views of related information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Graphical user interfaces that provide multiple views of related information (such as frames, panes, or windows) are becoming increasingly prevalent in commercially available software products. Unfortunately, current multi-view interfaces are severely limited by a lack of user level control over the relationships between views, view placement and layout, and view presentation.
Most contemporary windowing systems employ an independent, overlapping windowing model (see, for example, E. Kandogan, B. Shneiderman, Elastic Windows: Evaluation of Multi-Window Operations, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems SIGCHI 97 (March 1997)). As graphical user interfaces become increasingly information intensive, individual applications within these windowing systems have grown to provide multiple related views of information. These related views are typically ad hoc in their interaction and functionality, i.e. there is little user level control over the relationships between views, view placement and layout, and view presentation.
It is becoming more commonplace for application programs to use multiple linked views to visualize large amounts of content. However, current implementations of these information intensive interfaces give users virtually no control over where a followed link is displayed. Users need ways to arrange and link windows that suit their own tasks. In fact, many users have strongly differing opinions over various approaches to view management. These are quasi-religious arguments for which there are no universally correct answers. While some people prefer multi-paned windows, stacked vertically or horizontally, others despise the paned approach and choose to use separate windows. This diversity of opinions argues for maximum flexibility, allowing users to customize the way in which their views are managed.
The following discussion illustrates these issues through three sample applications, i.e. Netscape Navigator, Netscape Messenger, and filesystem browsers in the Windows 95 and Macintosh operating systems.